Questions You Must Ask a Prospective SEO Analyst

Are you in the dilemma whether to hire an in-house SEO analyst or hire a consulting agency? If you’re looking to hire an in-house SEO analyst, I want to help you to find the right one. That’s because our most successful SEO consulting happens when there’s a competent SEO manager working in-house. Choosing a right in-house SEO person is a daunting task since SEO person should be a good communicator as the right in-house SEO person communicates well with both the CMO and the consultant. He or she follows through on our recommendations and fulfills the plans we’ve jointly made. And a good in-house SEO analyst or manager makes the client-consultant relationship a real partnership - so the client wins.

I am sharing a list of 30 questions that you would pose to the aspiring SEO analyst for your firm. Find the right analyst by asking questions that will allow candidates to not only talk about their SEO experience but also reveal their digital marketing knowledge and strategy.

30 SEO Interview Questions

1. What makes a website search engine-friendly?
2. How do you define success when it comes to SEO?
3. How do you stay updated on industry news and algorithm changes?
4. What programming languages do you have experience with?
5. Regarding your previous SEO job, what did an average day look like?
6. How do you adapt to the needs of different clients?
7. How often do you communicate with clients?
8. How did you learn SEO?
9. How do you approach keyword research?
10. What is the relationship between SEO, SEM and social media marketing?
11. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
12. How do you stay organized when working on an SEO project?
13. Who are Gary Illyes and John Mueller?
14. What is your favorite website and why?
15. What is your opinion on proper link building?
16. How have you dealt with link penalties?
17. What’s the ideal speed for a site to load a web page?
18. What method do you use to redirect a page?
19. What are your thoughts on accelerated mobile pages (AMP)?
20. What is your process for helping a local business become more visible in search results?
21. Are you aware of the latest changes to Google and the latest updates to Panda and Penguin?
22. How has Hummingbird changed the landscape of search?
23. What is Google’s preferred method of configuring a mobile site?
24. What do you know about content building and content marketing?
25. What has been your experience getting content featured in answer boxes?
26. How have you utilized structured data to earn featured snippets?
27. What are the three possible configurations for a mobile site? Which do you prefer and why?
28. What’s your greatest digital marketing success story?
29. How do you stay up-to-date on the near-constant search algorithm changes?
30. What metrics do you use to measure SEO success?

"WHITE HAT SEO" Not about Gaming Google - 2

#3: HELP GOOGLE KNOW WHAT YOUR CONTENT IS ABOUT BY GETTING VOTES OF CONFIDENCE

Google needs to know what your content is about in order to place it in the right SERPs for the right search terms.

One way it does this is through on-page signals–things like the inclusion of keywords in the URL, title, body content, etc.

Another way is through on-site signals— internal links from related pages on your site using anchor text that is descriptive of the content (i.e. it includes the target keyword).

And then there are off-site signals–inbound links from 3rd party trust-worthy sites that have related content linking to your content. A 3rd party citation of your content tells Google that a real, live person who created it thinks your content truly is about “xyz” (aka your keyword).

This is the origin of SEO’s spammy reputation. Bad-actors manipulated off-site signals by fabricating inbound links with things like link farms—clearly not living, breathing humans giving a vote of confidence that the content is indeed about what you claim it to be.

As a result, Google has put great effort into knowing when an inbound link is from a quality, trust-worthy site, versus a fabricated link purely for manipulative gain. The former helps you. The latter hurts you.

So when you hear the term “link building,”forget those old school black hat tactics. The game has changed. When done right, link building can be an extremely powerful way to boost search rankings. As a bonus, it could drive referral traffic too. 

The key here is in building relationships and reaching out to bloggers and journalists to let them know about your awesome content.We’ll need to write a whole other post on white hat link building.

BUT THE POINT IS -

If you followed technique #1 , you’ll have content that’s in demand–and the bloggers you reach out to will know their audience enough to know that.

If you followed technique #2 , bloggers will appreciate the resourcefulness of your content and be more likely to cite it when it is relevant and complimentary to the content they are creating.

IN WHITE HAT

• Reach out to influencers to let them know about your content, pointing out why it might add value to their content.
• Personalize your outreach in a genuine,one-on-one way that shows you know the blogger.
• Be patient. Building mutually beneficial relationships takes time. 

IN BLACK HAT

• Send mass emails to influencers with no personalization. It won’t be effective. It won’t get you to the top of Google. And you’ll burn bridges in the process.

"WHITE HAT SEO" Not about Gaming Google

SEO isn’t about gaming Google. It’s simply about creating content that people want and that satisfies their search intent.Looking at SEO from this perspective can make it easier to understand and easier to execute white hat SEO techniques. By putting aside the spammy tactics of yesteryear, you can produce and publish customer-focused content without that scammy vibe.

#1: USE KEYWORD RESEARCH TO DISCOVER CONTENT DEMAND

A little keyword research can go a long way in helping you understand what your audience wants. Not only will you find topics that are frequently searched, you’re also likely to stumble on search language they are using that you might not have anticipated. One reason for this— your knowledge and expertise in your industry is deeper than theirs. The language you use is probably industry jargon that your audience doesn’t use. This is a great opportunity for you to find long tail keywords that your audience can understand, and create content that speaks to them.Creating content using language your customers use is as white hat as it comes. Forget stuffing your content with a single keyword over and over again. This is about meeting customers on their turf, speaking to them naturally and in terms they understand.

IN WHITE HAT -

• Choose to target keywords that are fairly popular. The ease of ranking for those keywords will depend on the competitive strength of your site. Be realistic in how high of a competition level you can take on and still get results.
• Include the target keywords in all the right places—URL, title tag, alt images, body content, etc.
• Use other keywords that are related to your target keyword within the body of your content.
• Use the target keyword in the anchor text of internal links to the new content.

IN BLACK HAT -

• Don’t — aim for quantity over quality. With all the searches Google receives every day, you can be certain its algorithms understand synonymous phrases. Instead of repeating the same keyword phrase as often as possible, use like-keywords to reinforce what your content is about.

#2: CREATE SEO CONTENT THAT ANSWERS THE SEARCH INTENT

You don’t need to be a technical genius to do SEO right. Like most marketing disciplines, a little bit of empathy for the user searching can go a long way to getting results in SEO.

Think from the perspective of the searcher.

• What are they looking for? 
• What are the problems they are seeking advice or solutions to?
• Are they looking for advice, or are they looking to buy something?

Search intent tends to fall into one of these categories:

• Learn something
• Find solution to a problem 
• Purchase something

When evaluating your list of keyword opportunities, think about whether a person searching That phrase is hoping to learn something, find a solution to a problem, or make a purchase.

The phrase they’ve entered reveals a lot about their intention.

When you create your SEO content be sure to give users what they are looking for. If they are looking for an educational “how to” article,don’t create content that pushes a sale.

IN WHITE HAT -

• Think of your content as a Q & A. The keyword query is the question. Your content is the answer. 
• Be a useful resource by giving the searcher what they want.
• Be clear in your title tag and meta description about what your content promises.

IN BLACK HAT

• Don’t— bait and switch the searcher with misleading click-bait titles. Your title should always tie directly to your content. If it doesn’t, the visitor is more likely to bounce, sending Google a signal that your content didn’t serve their search interest. As a result, Google will drop your position in the SERPs like a hot potato.

Source : Alexa e Book

Do not use these, when using Digital Marketing 2016 ?

Digital marketing in 2016 comes with a new set of problems, pitfalls, technologies, innovations, strategies, and opportunities.Analyse yourself, and avoid these silly digital marketing mistakes.

1. Failing to identify your target audience.
Identifying your target audience is the initial step in any type of marketing endeavor. Tragically, it’s also easy to overlook. Don’t make this mistake. Study your audience, and much of your marketing will take care of itself.

2. Not having a strategy at all.
Yes, it happens. Sadly, much of digital marketing relies on “tactics” and “techniques” rather than solid strategies and goals. Before you ever pick a tactic to try, form a strategy to rely on. Your Online marketing strategy will be your guiding light as you engage in the wild world of marketing.

3. Forgetting about mobile.
Mobilegeddon may have happened in 2015, but we’re still living in the wake of its impact. If you aren’t functioning with a mobile-first strategy, you are alienating more than half of your potential audience. Mobile optimization is a key ingredient both for conversions and content, so keep it at the front of your mind when forming your digital marketing strategy.

4. Rejecting SEO.
The SEO-is-dead myth has been around almost as long as SEO has been a thing. Now, in an age of artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms, more marketers are willing to say “What gives?” and leave SEO well enough alone. This is a mistake. Why? Because SEO remains (and will continue to remain) one of the building blocks of a technologically sound and competitive web presence. Without an understanding of SEO, your marketing presence will falter and fail. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about SEO. Just get the basics, and you should be fine.

5. Not doing any conversion optimization.
There was an era in digital marketing when it was okay not to do conversion optimization. That time is far gone. Failure to conduct regular and careful split testing is a recipe for decline. Don’t be afraid of it. Yes, it requires some technical chops and an eye for analytics, but most CRO software eliminates the need for in-depth knowledge.

6. Trying every digital marketing tactic .
The best method for avoiding tactic overwhelm is to

•  figure out what your audience wants, 
•  identify where they are,
•  adopt a strategy to reach them. With this kind of laser focus, many tactics will fall to the wayside.

7. Using social media platform .
A close cousin of the “trying every digital marketing tactic” mistake is “using every social media platform.” I’ve watched hundreds of digital marketers make this massive mistake. It’s obviously important to have a social media strategy. But when you try to blanket the social media universe with your brand presence, you’re going to fall short. Why? Because social media channels require a ton of time and energy. If you try to go all out on each one, you’re going to burn out very quickly. A better approach? Pick the top three platforms where your audience hangs out, and give these all your energy.

8. Link building.
Link building (done wrong) is an old SEO tactic that got websites into trouble. Thankfully, most SEOs and marketers are beyond this point, but it bears repeating: Don’t do “link building” as it was traditionally performed. There are ways to do it correctly, so take heed.

9. Avoiding content marketing.
Content marketing should form the core of any digital marketing strategy. We have not yet reached the point at which content marketing has diminished in effectiveness. Using content aggressively, strategically, and expertly will take your marketing where you want it to go.

10. Having no marketing budget.
If you get stingy with your marketing budget, one of two things will happen. First, you realize your mistake and get desperate, dipping into other funds, which messes up your entire business plan. Second, you have no budget, so you do no marketing, and your business fails to take off. Either way, you run the distinct risk of destroying your business. Instead of shortcircuiting your business with no marketing budget, release a few funds to get the ball rolling. This is especially critical for startup businesses that have little to no market penetration.

Source : Forbes

Basic SEO Questions to be asked before hiring an SEO Consultant .

Again SEO is something where we cannot fix the parameters permanently and follow them for a long time to give a stability to our ranking (SERP), because most of the ranking factors depends on algorithm update and we cannot avoid them.As our all strategy towards the website in terms of SEO should be based on these updates and guidelines.

So its totally volatile in nature but still we can have a list of questions to ask before hiring any expert.

Normally whenever we are about to hire or finalize any SEO expert we should ask these questions, to evaluate the candidate proficiency, here is the list .

1. What do you understand by SEO ?
2. Why do the SEO is so important for a website ?
3. what are your favourite SEO tools
4. What are some of your most successful SEO projects
5. How do you optimize a web page? 
6. What is a robots.txt file?
7. What is the X-Robots tag? 
8. What is an .htaccess file and how do you use it? 
9. What is a rel canonical?
10. What is noindex, nofollow? 
11. When do you use robotx.txt, a rel canonical and a noindex nofollow?
12. Is case important for meta tags?
13. What is the nositelinksearchbox meta tag?
14. What is the notranslate tag? 
15. What are 404 errors?
16. What is 200 ok status means
17. what is redirects and when do you use these, 301 & 302 redirect?
18. Have you used Screaming Frog tool?
19. How often you ranking in a month and how do you check ?
20. You are Google Analytics Certified ?
21. What will you do if u saw a client got a spike in 404 errors in the Google search console?
22. How would you test to see how Google can see content on a page?
23. What would you do to get a page indexed quickly?
24. What are directory structures and subdomains and how are they important for SEO?
25. What is https, how do you switch to https and why is it important for SEO?
26. What are all the manual penalties for a website by Google?
27. How would you handle 1,000 new links pointing at your website with commercial anchor text?
28. What are all the algorithmic updates released by Google?
29. How do you recover from a penalty like unnatural link penalty ?
30. What is a disavow file and how do you create it ?
31. How do you send out a link takedown request? 
32. What are the five types of website models?
33. What are the most common page speed issues?
34. What are mobile usability errors and how do you fix them?
35. What is Keyword cannibalization?
36. When do you use the rel="canonical" tag?
37. What do rel prev/next tags do?
38. What are all the types of sitemaps?
39. How do you find broken external links pointing at your website?
40. What would you do to optimize a website purely in Ajax or JavaScript?
41. What is a server header checker?
42. What are good links for SEO?
43. What is the difference between absolute and relative URLs?
44. What is a hreflang tag?
45. What is Unicode/UTF-8 & why does that matter to Google?
46. What is the refresh meta tag and why is it not recommended?
47. How can you use user agent and IP location detection to improve UX?
48. How do you optimize for Google video search?
49. What is a Google product feed?
50. What are the attributes of a product feed?
51. How do you optimize for Google news?
52. What is Google news publisher center?
53. Can Google news crawl PDF files?
54. Does Google require a Google news sitemap?
55. What are the Google news standout tags and keywords tags? How are they different ?
56. Do you know the tools like SEM Rush, SpyFu, Majestic and Moz . And how they are different from each other ?

Hope this list will be helpful for interviews ..Answers for all the listed question will be published in separate post. 

Google Algorithm Updates - 2014

Pigeon Expands (UK, CA, AU) - December, 2014
Google's major local algorithm update, dubbed "Pigeon", expanded to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The original update hit the United States in July 2014. The update was confirmed on the 22nd but may have rolled out as early as the 19th.

For more visit : Moz

Penguin Everflux - December , 2014
A Google representative said that Penguin had shifted to continuous updates, moving away from infrequent, major updates. While the exact timeline was unclear, this claim seemed to fit ongoing flux after Penguin 3.0 (including unconfirmed claims of a Penguin 3.1).


Pirate 2.0 - October , 2014
More than two years after the original DMCA/"Pirate" update, Google launched another update to combat software and digital media piracy. This update was highly targeted, causing dramatic drops in ranking to a relatively small group of sites.


Penguin 3.0 - October 17, 2014
More than a year after the previous Penguin update (2.1), Google launched a Penguin refresh. This update appeared to be smaller than expected (<1% of US/English queries affected) and was probably data-only (not a new Penguin algorithm). The timing of the update was unclear, especially internationally, and Google claimed it was spread out over "weeks".


"In The News" Box - October 2014
Google made what looked like a display change to News-box results, but later announced that they had expanded news links to a much larger set of potential sites. The presence of news results in SERPs also spiked, and major news sites reported substantial traffic changes.


Panda 4.1 (#27) - September , 2014
Google announced a significant Panda update, which included an algorithmic component. They estimated the impact at 3-5% of queries affected. Given the "slow rollout," the exact timing was unclear.


Authorship Removed - August , 2014
Following up on the June 28th drop of authorship photos, Google announced that they would be completely removing authorship markup (and would no longer process it). By the next morning, authorship bylines had disappeared from all SERPs.


HTTPS/SSL Update - August , 2014
After months of speculation, Google announced that they would be giving preference to secure sites, and that adding encryption would provide a "lightweight" rankings boost. They stressed that this boost would start out small, but implied it might increase if the changed proved to be positive.

Pigeon - July , 2014
Google shook the local SEO world with an update that dramatically altered some local results and modified how they handle and interpret location cues. Google claimed that Pigeon created closer ties between the local algorithm and core algorithm(s).


Authorship Photo Drop - June , 2014
John Mueller made a surprise announcement (on June 25th) that Google would be dropping all authorship photos from SERPs (after heavily promoting authorship as a connection to Google+). The drop was complete around June 28th.

Google Announces the End of Author Photos in Search: What You Should Know (Moz)

Payday Loan 3.0 - June , 2014
Less than a month after the Payday Loan 2.0 anti-spam update, Google launched another major iteration. Official statements suggested that 2.0 targeted specific sites, while 3.0 targeted spammy queries.


Panda 4.0 (#26) - May , 2014
Google confirmed a major Panda update that likely included both an algorithm update and a data refresh. Officially, about 7.5% of English-language queries were affected. While Matt Cutts said it began rolling out on 5/20, our data strongly suggests it started earlier.

Panda 4.0, Payday Loan 2.0 & eBay's Very Bad Day (Moz)

Payday Loan 2.0 - May , 2014
Just prior to Panda 4.0, Google updated it's "payday loan" algorithm, which targets especially spammy queries. The exact date of the roll-out was unclear (Google said "this past weekend" on 5/20), and the back-to-back updates made the details difficult to sort out.


Page Layout #3 - February , 2014
Google "refreshed" their page layout algorithm, also known as "top heavy". Originally launched in January 2012, the page layout algorithm penalizes sites with too many ads above the fold.

10 Essential Questions to Ask B4 Hiring an SEO Consultant

1. May I have your existing clients list?

A reputable and reliable SEO consultant should be open to sharing Details of current and past  clients and his or her contact information, says Vanessa Fox, author of Marketing in the Age of Google (Wiley, 2012) and founder of Nine by Blue.

These references can help you to evaluate how effective the candidate is, as well as verify that the person did good work on specific SEO campaigns. Clients may not provide specific analytics, but they should be able to at least tell you if they see a positive impact on their search ranking, especially in conversions and in gaining an audience, as a direct result of the consultant's efforts.

2. How will you improve my search engine rankings?

A SEO consultant who won't freely discuss their methods in detail, cautions Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, a Seattle-based internet marketing software company and co-author of The Art of SEO (O'Reilly, 2012). They should explain the strategies they would use to drive up your website's search engine ranking, as well as estimate how long it could realistically take to achieve the SEO campaign goals you agree on.

Make sure the candidate's proposal includes an initial technical review of your website to weed out any problems that could lower your search engine ranking, including broken links and error pages. Consultants also should provide "on page" optimization, a process to make your website as search engine friendly as possible. It involves improving your website's URL and internal linking structure, along with developing web page titles, headings and tags.

Also, ask consultants if they provide "off page" SEO strategies to raise awareness of your content on other websites often via blogs, social media platforms and press releases.

3. Do you adhere to search engines' webmaster guidelines?  

Bing and Yahoo also post webmaster best practices that consultants should confirm they follow.

You want a consultant who strictly abides by Google's publicly posted webmaster best practices, which specifically prohibit 12 common SEO tricks, including automatically generating spam content and adding bogus hidden text and links. If a candidate doesn't follow those guidelines, your website could be relegated to a dismally low search results ranking. Or, worse yet, Google could ban it from search results altogether.

4. Can you guarantee my website will achieve a number-one ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo?

If the candidate answers yes, warning, "Turn and run in the other direction as fast as you can." Although it's impossible to guarantee a number-one ranking on any search engine, some unethical SEO consultants do make such bogus guarantees.

Consider it a red flag if the candidate claims to have an insider relationship with Google or any other search engine that will get you priority search results rankings. Only Google, Bing and Yahoo can control how high or low websites appear in their search results.

5. Are you experienced at improving local search results?

Appearing in the top local search engine results is especially important to small brick-and-mortar businesses trying to attract nearby customers, Rand says. You'll want a consultant who has expertise in local SEO techniques.

If your website is optimized for what's known as "local SEO," it should appear when someone nearby is searching for keywords that are relevant to your business. To achieve that, a consultant should add your business's city and state to your website's title tags and Meta descriptions, and get your site listed on Bing, Google and Yahoo's local listings, which are online directories of businesses that cater to a specific geographical area.

6. Will you share with me all changes you make to my site?

Search engine optimization will most likely require a number of changes to your existing web page coding. It's important to know exactly what adjustments the consultant plans to make and on how many web pages. If you would like the candidate to get your permission before accessing and altering your website code, be sure to say so.

For example, will consultants add new title tags to your existing HTML code or modify the existing ones? Will they provide additional copywriting content highlighting your products and services to beef up the number of visible, on-page keywords relevant to your potential customers? And do they plan to redesign all or some of your website navigation or add new pages to your site?

7. How do you measure the success of your SEO campaigns?

To gain the success of SEO efforts, you must track exactly how much traffic is being sent to your website and where it is coming from. Consultants should be experienced in using Google Analytics to track improvement in your site's search engine rankings, the number of links from other websites driving traffic to yours, the kinds of keywords searchers use to find your site, and much more.

Be sure to ask how often they plan to share these important analytics with you and how they would use the data to continually improve your search engine rankings and website traffic.

8. How will we communicate and how often?

SEO consultants' communication styles and customer service standards vary. You need to find someone whose approach best fits your needs. Ask if the candidate prefers to talk in person or via phone, Skype, texting or email. And find out how often he or she will reach out to you with status updates.

9. What are your fees and payment terms?

You need to know how much you'll be charged, of course, and also whether the consultant gets paid hourly, by retainer or by project. Project-based payments are the most common in the SEO consulting industry, and they can vary widely, depending on a project's size and complexity. Most contract projects ranged between 50,000 and 500000, according to Moz's 2011 pricing survey of more than 600 SEO firms.

The study also found that the most common retainers ranged between Rs.15000.00 to Rs.25000.00 a month on the lower end and Rs 75000.00 to 110000 a month on the higher end, while the most common hourly rates ranged from Rs.1100.00 to 2500. Consultants who specifically serve small businesses often charge less per month and hour.

Other important payment-related questions: How often are invoice payments due -- every 30, 60 or 90 days? Is there any interest charge for late payments?

10. What happens when we part ways?

When your contract expires or if you terminate it early, you should still maintain ownership of all of the optimized web content you paid the consultant to provide.

Accordingly, you'll want to make sure the contract states that when you part ways, consultants will not change or remove any of the content they added, modified or optimized on your behalf. You also should ask consultants whether they charge any fees for early contract termination, and if so, to specify them in the contract.

Note: This information is convinced from different sources,and blogs will assume as reference & informational purpose only.